When I was eight years old I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going there was no reason to quit.

It's hard and sometimes it's scary. It still amazes my mother. I went home for Christmas one year and there were fans all over the front lawn hoping to see me.

My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house.

The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way.

There are women who take it to the wire. That's what they are looking for the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack.

I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

I only did karaoke once in my life. It was with Courtney Love and it was a total disaster. She pulled me on stage in front of 500 people at a wedding. I'd never done karaoke before.

However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbours we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account.

These days our senses are bombarded with aggression. We are constantly confronted with global images of unending escalating war and violence.

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror.

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity every crack in the common front against fascism.

It's much easier for me to make major life multi-million dollar decisions than it is to decide on a carpet for my front porch. That's the truth.

When you do a drama you are challenged to trust your inner voice much more. Because when you put a comedy in front of even a 25-person screening you know whether it's working or not. The barometer is overt.

I just think that I'll never have plastic surgery if I'm not in front of the camera. If you make your living selling this thing which is the way you look then maybe you do it. But trust me the minute I'm directing or producing and not starring I would never even think of it.

But I don't have a very good track record with royalty. My dress fell off in front of Prince Charles at the Prince's Trust so I'm just living up to my reputation.

In this world shipmates sin that pays its way can travel freely and without passport whereas Virtue if a pauper is stopped at all frontiers.

People who don't travel cannot have a global view all they see is what's in front of them. Those people cannot accept new things because all they know is where they live.

Heckling is an act of cowardice. If you want to speak get up in front of the microphone and speak don't sit in the dark hiding. It's easy to hide and shout and waste people's time.

There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve.

I don't have time for their judgement and their stupidity and you know they lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and look at their loser lives and then they look at me and they say 'I can't process it' well no you never will stop trying just sit back and enjoy the show. You know?

People always underestimate the impact of technology. To give you an example: In the 1970s the frontier for offshore development was 200 meters today it is 4 000 meters.

The newest computer can merely compound at speed the oldest problem in the relations between human beings and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem of what to say and how to say it.

I was terrified of being a teacher. To stand in front of a classroom the responsibility is boggling. Imagine! Standing in front of people!

Children are already accustomed to a world that moves faster and is more exciting than anything a teacher in front of a classroom can do.